Uncle Tom has suggested another feature for the software, on which comment would be welcomed.

At some tastings there can be insufficjent table space for the TN sheets. So, for very formal tastings, such as the Olympic tasting, there should be A6 tasting booklets, properly bound. Much of this is easily acomodated: /TastingNotesPaperType /A6 def already works; and /GlassesOnTastingNotePages [ GlassesOnSheets {{[ exch ]} forall} forall ] def would put one port on each of the A6 tasting-note sheets.

So, questions:

• Would each tasting booklet require a cover sheet? Saying what?

• With one wine per A6 sheet, I think the pages should be less cluttered. The column titles (currently ‟Times”, ‟Eye”, ‟Nose”, ‟Mouth”, ‟Score”) can be zapped with /TastingNotesColumnHeadings [] def and /TastingNotesColumnRelativeWidths [] def, which would also remove the vertical dashed lines. Would there be any other changes to the required page layout?

• With one wine per A6 sheet, should each sheet have a copy of the glasses tasting circle. Small, or A6-fillingly big? It might be tricky to have that faded, but if possible, should it be faded? (Technical question in comp.lang.postscript.)

jdaw1 wrote:At some tastings there can be insufficjent table space for the TN sheets. So, for very formal tastings, such as the Olympic tasting, there should be A6 tasting booklets, properly bound.

Given our habit of late changes to line-ups, attendance, etc I think the logistics of having these bound will prove to be extremely challenging.

As an alternative, we could purchase a relatively large batch of these and simply produce a sticker that could be applied to the front cover with the name and date of the tasting, perhaps with a second sticker listing the wines and attendees that could be placed inside the front cover as a title page?

DRT wrote:Given our habit of late changes to line-ups, attendance, etc I think the logistics of having these bound will prove to be extremely challenging.

If the binding is expensive per unit, agreed. But if it the the first item that costs most, each subsequent being relatively cheap, we could have some binders for un-named people, much as we currently do with TN sheets.

DRT wrote:with a second sticker listing the wines and attendees that could be placed inside the front cover as a title page?

DRT wrote:Given our habit of late changes to line-ups, attendance, etc I think the logistics of having these bound will prove to be extremely challenging.

If the binding is expensive per unit, agreed. But if it the the first item that costs most, each subsequent being relatively cheap, we could have some binders for un-named people, much as we currently do with TN sheets.

Your response doesn't address my point, which is logistics, not cost.

A printer will require a significant amount of time to print, bind and deliver these to us. That time scale will be impacted by what is meant by "properly bound". My suggestion was intended to circumvent those difficulties, not to save money.

jdaw1 wrote:• With one wine per A6 sheet, should each sheet have a copy of the glasses tasting circle. Small, or A6-fillingly big? It might be tricky to have that faded, but if possible, should it be faded? (Technical question in comp.lang.postscript.)

Happily settransfer can fade the circles, as illustrated by the following code.

(Works in Adobe Distiller; works in GhostScript; but settransfer ignored by Apple Preview. So good in the important two of the three.)

Forthcoming Placemat Feature
This suggests a more general feature, a boolean TastingNotePagesBackgroundCircles, and a real TastingNotePagesBackgroundCirclesFadingFactor, being both >0 and â‰¤1, and defaulting to 0.2. These would produce, on the TN pages, a diagonal stripe of circles, tightly fitted” , one for each wine on that TN page. If there’s only one wine ‟tightly fitted” would typically be the width of the page.

” Tightly fitted? What if there are two pages of TNs, one holding five ports, one holding six? Should the circles be compelled to be the same size? I say not, as they are so faint, and as one typically sees only one TN page at a time.

Spiral binding is quite cheap to have done, and works better with a small format than other binding methods, as the pages are easier to lay flat.

Customising them to each participant would be a bit of a struggle, but customising them to the event would be quite simple.

Easiest way would be for each page to be printed four up on an A4 sheet. These can then be stacked and guillotined, and the sets offered up to the spiral binder, which punches and stitches in a single action.

I am also told by my printers that for an A6 booklet, placing the comb on the long side is much to be preferred.

I would suggest that the front cover be colour printed on 250 gsm card, the inner pages on 120 gsm white paper, with the last page on plain white card.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I shall be sober and you will still be ugly - W.S. Churchill

My take is that this seems to be a lot of effort for no functional benefit over A4 tasting sheets and very little aesthetic benefit. Particularly when 50%+ will never be used.

I have previously tried using an A6 booklet for notes before and must admit i prefer the width of an A4 page to scribble on, so would strongly favour retention of A4 tasting note sheets even if A6 option is incorporated.

uncle tom wrote:This looks like a regular A4 tasting sheet to me - I can't see how it could be guillotined to A6..

I think this was to test the concept of the faded circle backgrounds, rather than the A6 format itself.

I was worried tht the backgrounds looked too dark on screen, but printed out they are sufficiently faded that they would not be a distraction from the handwriting.

As an alternative, I would suggest that on each page you could just keep the "G63" motif in big and bold lettering in top left corner and then incorporate the small "Graham 1963" lettering across the top of the page.

Guillotining to A6 will require careful thought about page layout, assuming the pages of the booklet will be double sided (which i think they should be)

RAYC wrote:My take is that this seems to be a lot of effort for no functional benefit over A4 tasting sheets and very little aesthetic benefit. Particularly when 50%+ will never be used.

I think this is the most sensible comment so far in this discussion.

Who are we making these for?

If it is for guests of the type and number that attended our most recent tasting I think they will go largely unused, and if not produced to a very high standard will appear rather naff and not worthy of a keepsake to remember the event. Personally, I would rather that our guests remember us for our Port and our company rather than our prowess at publishing fancy (or naff) tasting note booklets.

If they are being made for large tastings where 12 or 13 out of the 14 attendees are members of TPF they will be of very limited use as most of us either don't take/keep notes or we keep them electronically.

In both scenarios we should also consider how often this software is likely to be used:

>> How many 20+ person, 8-10 guest tastings are we likely to have in the future. I would suggest the answer is close to none.

>> How many TPFers want to carry a book home from a port tasting. I think the answer is probably close to the answer above.

So, is Julian being asked to spend lots of time creating software that will never or almost never be used?

uncle tom wrote:This looks like a regular A4 tasting sheet to me - I can't see how it could be guillotined to A6..

RAYC wrote:I think this was to test the concept of the faded circle backgrounds, rather than the A6 format itself.

Correct: that example was just to test the faded replica of the glasses-page circle.

RAYC wrote:I was worried tht the backgrounds looked too dark on screen, but printed out they are sufficiently faded that they would not be a distraction from the handwriting.

Thank you for testing.

RAYC wrote:As an alternative, I would suggest that on each page you could just keep the "G63" motif in big and bold lettering in top left corner and then incorporate the small "Graham 1963" lettering across the top of the page.

So like the ordinary old-fashioned TN sheets, featuring just one port. OK.

RAYC wrote:Guillotining to A6 will require careful thought about page layout, assuming the pages of the booklet will be double sided (which i think they should be)

Some printers’ printers can auto-rearrange pages for guillotining. It is much much easier for me to supply a PDF of A6 pages. Tom, please ask your printer. And I prefer single sided.

DRT wrote:If it is for guests of the type and number that attended our most recent tasting I think they will go largely unused, and if not produced to a very high standard will appear rather naff and not worthy of a keepsake to remember the event. Personally, I would rather that our guests remember us for our Port and our company rather than our prowess at publishing fancy (or naff) tasting note booklets.